Gay and Hogarth

The Beggar's Opera and A Scene from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera is a three-act ballad opera written by John Gay in 1728, with music by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is a landmark in Augustan theater and is the only example of the once-flourishing satirical ballad opera genre that remains popular today. German dramatist Bertolt Brecht was inspired by this work and wrote The Threepenny Opera, whose music was composed by Kurt Weill. Also, William Hogarth also is an important name from 18th-century England. He provided visual satires of the age. He painted a certain scene, the scene in which Polly and Lucy begged for Macheath’s life, from The Beggar’s Opera. Gay has a satirical approach to politics, both high and low culture. This satire influenced Hogarth and he demonstrated this influence in his visual satires. This article will discuss the painting “A Scene from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera” by Hogarth that we examined in class and explain how the audience and the characters of the opera are and how the opera attacks the British ruling class and Walpole government and what opera represents and indicates about the social life of this era.

The Beggar’s Opera of Gay satirizes the overly passionate members of the British upper class in Italian opera. The audience for the ballad opera included people from the lower class, middle class, and upper-class contrast to the opera's noble and upper-class. The audiences wanted to see the realism and satire in the ballad opera. The world of the Beggar's opera reflects reality, yet it is a comedy. The Beggar's Opera was a satire of the Italian opera tradition, and the political corruption of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, and his government. The work targets the upper class’ interest in Italian opera, and Robert Walpole, the head of the Whig Party, and politicians are ridiculed. Gay satirizes class differences, politics, and poverty focusing on the theme of corruption at all levels of society by ballad. Gay believes the lower class imitates the upper class and both are loose in morals. “No gentleman is ever looked upon the worse for killing a man in his own defense; and if the business cannot be carried on without it, what would you have a gentleman do?”. (Gay 6) There is a portrait of the lower class given in this sentence. This means the poorer class’s morality is beneath the middle class and they are ridiculous. This draws a line between what the lower class does and how they are influenced by the upper class. It is obvious that the lower class imitates the upper class and that both are loose in morals and Gay satirizes the class differences in court by using characters such as Peachum and Lockit.

In the painting “A Scene from The Beggar's Opera”, William Hogarth shows the scene from Act 3. In this scene, a highwayman named Macheat is chained because of a robbery and is sentenced to death. He stands in the middle of the stage as a powerful dominant figure in red. He stands between two kneeling women who are his lovers. One of them is the jailer’s daughter, Lucy Lockit, and the other one is the lawyer’s daughter, Polly Peachum who betrayed Macheath. When we look at the painting, it is interesting that audiences and actors are painted on the same stage. The audiences that are close to the stage and the players are privileged, wealthy people who are seated on stage with the actors and can watch the play on the stage. Those people include aristocracy, lords, dukes, Gay, and Hogarth himself. The interesting thing is that the world that the game constructs also includes the class it criticizes. In a way, aristocracy is placed on the stage. Gay's ballad opera criticizes the system and the people of that time, but the people he criticizes are actually privileged people sitting close to the stage. One of the ironic things is that the high and low classes are in the same place. The fact that the audience sits next to the stage indicates that they are also a part of the play and that the characters in the play have their own sources.

Also, in the painting, portraying the criminal Macheat as a noble lord is an exciting subject. Why is a thief so boldly and well-dressed? We can ask questions such as whether such criminals are seen as heroes by the audience. The story is focused on the social inequity, of thieves, prostitutes, and criminals in the 18th century. The satirical content of The Beggar’s Opera shows a resemblance of characters to well-known political figures. Gay took inspiration from real-life criminals to create his own characters. For instance, Gay’s characters Macheath and Peachum are believed to come from real-life criminals Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild. If criminality is satirized or glamorized in The Beggar’s Opera is controversial. Gay satirizes it for sure yet also glamorizes it because the act of illegal conduct benefits people who suffer from society. Macheath life is an extremely desirable lifestyle for other people. He is a common man but he becomes the height of celebrity. Macheath is a free spirit and his mistreatment of Polly and his affairs with other women gives him globalization and he appears brave to the public.

 So, this article discussed the painting A Scene from The Beggar's Opera and the ideology of criminality and The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay and the visual satire of it by Hogarth. The Beggar’s Opera is a complex combination, it both satirizes and glamorizes criminality. It criticizes the lower and upper classes through the equivalency between criminals and the court and criticizes the lower and upper classes, Gay elevates the statue of the middle-class audience.

Work Cited

Gay, John The Beggar's Opera. 2018. Gutenberg. https://gutenberg.org/files/25063/25063-h/25063-h.htm